The age of digital cameras is generated huge amount of digital images. Thus there are known many different systems for archiving and searching images. From the well-known solutions the closest to the present invention are for example solutions, which are described in United States and Japanese patent documents US2005050038, JP2004234228, JP2004005761.
For example in US patent application US2005050038 is described information search apparatus and method wherein a search request input processing unit holds an input query word in a query word holding unit. An associative word unfolding processing unit acquires associative words in association with the query word held in the query word holding unit with reference to an associative word dictionary. An image content search-processing unit using associative words makes a keyword search of image information on the basis of the obtained associative words and the query word. A sensory pattern unfolding processing unit obtains the query word and sensory patterns corresponding to associative words of the query word, and searches image information using feature amounts of the obtained sensory patterns. A search result integration-processing unit integrates the search results obtained by the image content word search processing unit and sensory pattern search processing unit.
In Japanese patent application JP2004234228 is described image search device and method to streamline the operation of assigning a keyword to an image by detecting an object in the image when the image is classified in an image search device. The image search device comprises image storing means for saving an image to be classified and searched for in a database along with a keyword, object recognizing means for recognizing a given object in the input image, a keyword presenting means for presenting keywords related to the object if the object recognizing means recognize the object, and an object information inputting means for checking, adding to or correcting the keywords presented by the keyword presenting means.
In Japanese patent application JP2004005761 is described keyword extraction and searching system. To recognize a character based on image information read from a description document and a paper document to automatically extract a character recognition result proposal sequence, to automatically extract a keyword proposal based on the character recognition result proposal sequence, to automatically select a keyword from the keyword proposal, based on reliability, significance and a field, and to automatically extract the keyword from the description document and the image information, as to keyword extracting/search system for extracting the keyword from the image information of the document. This system is provided with a character recognizing part for recognizing the character based on the image information of the original document to generate the character recognition result proposal sequence, a keyword extracting part for extracting, as the keyword proposal, one consistent with by retrieving a word dictionary as to the proposal sequence, or one having a value of a prescribed threshold value or more by finding reliability of the keyword based on the reliability of the individual proposal sequence, and a keyword selecting part for selecting the keyword out of the keyword proposals when the significance corresponding to a position in the original document of the each keyword proposal is the prescribed threshold value or more.